Angie Hodapp

Smoking

"Your mom smokes," says Carla. She leans her head to one side and wrings out her long brown hair with both hands. A little splash of water hits the asphalt and evaporates.

"Nuh-uh," I say. I am watching her, wishing my hair were like that. Thick and long. Shiny.

"She does too," Carla says. "I saw her last night. She was smoking a cigarette on the couch when we were sleeping."

"She was not," I say. "And besides, how could you see her if you were sleeping?"

Carla clicks her tongue. "I woke up," she says in her what-do-you-know voice. She pulls a dry tee shirt over her wet swimming suit and steps into her shorts. Looking at me sideways, she says, "I woke up because it was the witching hour."

"There's no such thing," I tell her. She's trying to scare me, but I've heard this one before-the one about how the demons and devils come out to dance with the witches down in the street after midnight. She's told me before about how she wakes up to watch them from Grandma's window, and can't you see them, too? They're right there, with their red capes and their horns and their pitchforks. Can't you see them? Sure, Carla, I can! I can see them! And then she falls over laughing. No you can't, stupid, I made it up. There's no such thing. "There's no such thing," I say again.

"Sure there is," she replies. "Grandma says." She combs out her hair and snaps in two little gold barrettes to keep her bangs off her face. She's growing them out. With one finger, I reach up above my ear, pull a piece of wet hair down to the corner of my mouth, and chew. "And if you don't believe me," she continues, "you can just stay awake tonight and see for yourself."

"I don't feel like it," I say. But I'm not sure anymore if we're talking about the witching hour or my mom smoking. My mom doesn't smoke. Carla's mom smokes. My eyes sting. From the chlorine, probably.

All these little kids in the pool are yelling Marco and Polo and splashing water all over the place. One of the lifeguards blows a whistle and yells for someone to stop it.

I back up against the fence and towel-blot my suit some more so the seat of my shorts won't get soaked when I put them on. Carla stays put. She's bunching up her towel and stuffing it in her bag. I pull my nose plug up over my head, and its rubbery strap tangles in my hair. I can't get it loose. I don't want Carla to see this-she thinks I'm a baby because I'm scared of getting water up my nose-so I yank at it. Hard. It comes free, along with a fat snarl of my hair. I actually hear it rip free from my scalp, which already hurts because I think it's sunburned.

"Hurry up," says Carla. She's walking away from me, toward the gate.

While she's not looking, I fling what there is of my thin, blonde hair to one side and squeeze. Nothing happens.



Grandma's in her orange chair watching a soap, and Mom and Aunt Judy are side-by-side on the sofa. Judy is sitting on one hip, kind of, with her bare feet tucked up behind her. There's an amber-colored glass ashtray balanced on the arm of the sofa next to her elbow, and she's got a lit cigarette pinched between two fingers. She looks like a movie star. A thin strand of smoke twists up through the air toward the ceiling. My mom, I notice, is not smoking.

Mom takes one look at my sunburn and haystack hair, and her eyebrows pull together. "Ouch," she says. "Kitchen sink."

"It doesn't hurt," I say, but I head for the bathroom to get the aloe anyway. I take a look at my face-it's deep pink, like the inside of a grapefruit. My hair is brittle and sun-bleached. Maybe even a little green. I grab the shampoo and cream rinse, too.

Mom meets me in the kitchen and turns on the water in the sink. She hooks her thumb over the faucet and bats at the spray with her fingers until it gets to be the right temperature. I drape a clean towel over my shoulders and stick my head in the sink. Mom starts scrubbing.

"Ow," I say. "Ow, ow, ow."

She eases up a little. Upside-down in the sink, I keep my eyes squeezed shut-I'm afraid of the soap getting in my eyes. Mom is beside me, bouncing my head up and down under the tap. I remember what Carla said at the pool, and I turn my head a little and try to smell my mom's clothes. Nothing but the smell of shampoo. Apples. She rinses my hair out and turns off the water, and I wrap the towel around my head and go back into the living room. The boys have just come in-Mark, my older brother, and Clete, Carla's older brother. Who knows what they've been up to today. Judy stubs her cigarette into the bottom of her ashtray, stands up, and asks the boys if they're ready to go-they're sleeping out at the farm tonight. Clete kisses Grandma's cheek. "Let's race tomorrow," he says to her. "To the end of the block and back." Grandma chuckles in her chair, one hand on her chest. "We'll see you tomorrow, boys," she says. And they're out the door. Carla scrambles up and perches on the arm of Grandma's chair, right between Grandma and the windowsill. Grandma's hand goes up and pats Carla's knee, and Carla watches to make sure I've seen. That's her spot. Her territory. Grandma's knitting now, just listening to her soap, and Carla gives me a little smile-the kind of smile that makes me mad. Then she turns her face and gazes out the window.



Dinner at Grandma's is whatever. Cereal or a frozen TV dinner. Kentucky Fried Chicken or A&W, if someone's willing to drive over and pick it up. Sometimes my mom or one of the aunts will make a beef stew or a hamburger hot dish with macaroni. But tonight, dinner is whatever. Mom doesn't say anything when I pour myself a second bowl of Apple Jacks.

The sky is twilight-purple when Carla and I decide to walk up to Zimmerman's for candy. We missed Ruthie's popcorn wagon tonight, so we promise ourselves we'll get home from the pool earlier tomorrow. But Zimmerman's is just as good. They sell marshmallow pumpkins and lemon drops by the scoop, weigh them in little white paper bags. Plus they have things like yarn and coloring books and paper dolls and Barbie clothes. I've got two dollar bills from Grandma's freezer, still cold, and a sugar tooth. Carla's got a five and instructions to pick up milk and bread at Hale's on the way back.

"Let's get some of these," says Carla. We're at the candy counter at Zimmerman's, and she's holding up a pack of candy cigarettes.

I look at the package and think for a minute. "I don't like those," I say. And I really don't. They taste like chalk. "And besides, my mom would get mad."

She clicks her tongue. "She won't get mad. They're just candy," she says. She pulls off the cellophane wrapping and opens the package.

"You didn't pay for those," I whisper, looking over my shoulder for Mr. Zimmerman.

"I'm going to," she replies. She picks out a candy cigarette and braces it between her lips. With two fingers, she pulls it away from her mouth, tilts her head back, and blows at the ceiling.

Cool. I want one of those. In fact, I want my own pack. I put a bag of Reese's Pieces back on the shelf and pick up some candy cigarettes of my own. We pay and leave the store, our little bags of candy clutched in our fists, and cross the street to Hale's.

Inside Hale's, Carla and I smoke our candy cigarettes and saunter up and down the aisles, picking things up like maybe we might want to buy them, but then putting them back. Nothing is interesting. We're older than people think-teenagers at least. Wise. Other late-night grocery shoppers glance at us and smile. By the time we get Grandma's bread and milk to the checkout, I've started crunching on my cigarette. I'm a little girl again, a little girl with stringy yellow-green hair and plastic sandals. But Carla's cigarette still hangs from her bottom lip, and she's got her eyes all squinty, like she's shielding them from the smoke.



We're awake late-too much sugar. Grandma went to bed a couple of hours ago, and my mom is lying motionless on the sofa bed, asleep, we think, in the television's blue glow. Carla and I have made a nest on the floor, a nest of quilts and pillows from the sofa. We've just finished watching Parent Trap with the sound on almost zero, and we're whispering to each other about what it would be like to have a twin sister when Carla says, "Look at the clock. It's almost the witching hour."

My throat gets tight. "There's no such thing," I say. And then I add, "So shut up."

Carla shrugs and leans forward to push the television's off button. The room goes from blue to orange-the orange street lamp on the corner is almost even with the living room's picture window. Carla crawls over to the window ledge and raises herself up on her knees. Slowly. Like she doesn't want to be seen. Then she gasps and jumps away from the window, ducking her head. "They're out there," she hisses as she dives under the quilts next to me. "There's fire coming out of the street, and there's devils with red skin, and demons with black skin, like they're all burned up, and there's witches on brooms!"

"No there's not," I whisper back. "I don't believe you."

"Go look!" she says, throwing the quilts over her face.

But I don't. I cover my head with the quilts and curl up on my side, my back to Carla, my back to the orange window. Carla laughs a little in the dark. She falls asleep before I do.



Bad dream, and I'm awake. Carla's still breathing beside me, and I'm still lying with my back to the window. I'm in Grandma's apartment. Safe.

But something makes a sound in the dark-a crackle, a breath. And there's a smell. Smoke. Carla said there was fire coming up out of the street. Is it still the witching hour? I shut my eyes. The Lord is my shepherd makes me to lie green pastures still waters yea though I walk shadow of death no evil art with me . . .

Crackle. Breath. Smoke. I open my eyes.



Carla and I race up the steps to Grandma's apartment. The steps are painted blue-they're slippery and steep, but we run anyway, no matter our mothers saying not to. They're not here right now, our mothers. They can't see us. We push open the door to Grandma's apartment and drop our swim bags and wet towels on the floor. Barbara and Janice are smoking at the kitchen table. Judy, Carla's mom, is smoking on the sofa. There's a glass, amber-colored ashtray balanced on the arm of the sofa next to her elbow. My mom is sitting on the sofa with Judy-not smoking. Mark, my older brother, and Clete, Carla's older brother, are sitting on the swivel chairs, holding cereal bowls under their chins and shoveling Fruit Loops into their mouths. They're watching Gilligan's Island, and they don't look up when we come in. Grandma is sitting in her orange chair by the window, knitting something.

"I thought I said don't run up those stairs," says Judy. She sucks on her cigarette, exhales, and squints at Carla through the smoke. I know she's talking to both of us, but I feel kind of smug that Carla's getting it.

"I wasn't," Carla says.

"I wasn't either," I add. I'm on my own.

"Don't lie to me," Judy says back, but she's still only looking at Carla. The aunts have a thing about not yelling at each others' kids. This comes in handy.

Carla gets this bored look on her face, and I look over at my mom. She's giving me the beak-a look that means don't start. But what I notice is that she's not smoking, even though Judy is.

In my mind, my mom is sitting up in the pull-out sofa bed in the middle of the night. She's sitting there in that orange light that comes in the window from the street lamp on the corner. And she's smoking. In my mind, she's hugging herself, holding.



There are two apartments over the library. The little one used to be Annie's. Annie and Grandma made Norwegian dolls for church fairs-pretty cloth dolls with lacy skirts and felt shoes and embroidered faces. When Annie died, Grandma told Mom about the funeral. She cried a little and said, "You should have seen all dah roses." She said roses with hard S's. She said busy that way too. "What are you kids up to?" she'd say from her orange chair when Carla and I would get to doing something, say, with crayons and glue and scraps of yarn. "You're awfully bissy over there."

After Annie died, Oscar moved in. Oscar smells like pee and his pants don't fit right. One leg drags a little when he walks, and you can't understand him when he talks. He drools some, too. You can see shiny little streaks between the silver whiskers and wrinkles on his chin. I'm kind of scared of Oscar, even though everyone says what a nice man he is.

"Poor Oscar," they say with heads tilted over to one side and their eyes blinking fast.